Saturday, July 05, 2014

June started out so promising: four blog post in the first two weeks! But then life got busy. I am now down near Savannah searching for a place to live as I am moving back (after nearly 3 decades) to the land of heat and humid and sand gnats, but also some of the most beautiful low country marsh you can imagine! And I'm excited about the new opportunity.

In 1976, a year after the fall of Saigon,
Terzari, the late an Italian journalist who lived much of his adult life in
Asia, was told by a fortune-teller that he should not fly during the year
1993. Although he didn't believe in
fortune-telling, the specific warning stayed with him and as 1993 began to draw
near, he decided to spend the year traveling on the ground. This book tells of his journeys that year as
well as bringing to life the richness and the challenges of Asia as the 20th
century drew to a close. Having
travelled along many of the same paths two decades later, I was fascinated with
Terzari’s insight, saddened by some of his findings, and amused
by his humor.

Terzari experience in Asia as a journalist
included being one of the few Westerners to have experienced both the fall of
Cambodia and South Vietnam. His life
almost ended at the hands of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. He was being set against a wall in Poipet to
be shoot and it was only at the last minute, through his basic knowledge of
Chinese, that his life was spared. In
1993, at the time of elections in Cambodia, he once again visited that wall.
(275) Terzari began his year on the
ground in Cambodia reporting on the United Nation's investigation of Khmer war
crimes. Having stopped flying, he was
replaced with another correspondent who was in a helicopter crash. Luckily, no one was killed, but the news of
the crash gave Terzari a moment to reflect on the possibility.

I was drawn to Terzari’s
idea of traveling on the ground for so long, especially after having travelled
overland in Southeast Asia in 2011.
However, at first, I was taken back when Terzari seemed to build his
trip around visits to fortune-tellers in Asia.
Every place he visited, he sought out a fortune-teller and began to
compare notes and fortunes. Unlike the
West, Terzari says, Asia remained superstitious long after the West. Communistic governments often tried to stamp
out foretelling, even though as Terzari notes, many top officials even
consulted foretellers before making major decisions.(85) He even suggested one of the West's failure
in its counter-espionage efforts in Southeastern Asia came from its lack of
understanding the role astrology plays in Asian decision-making.(87) From my own experience, I remember being
shocked of Korean Christians consulting shamans for the best date to get
married (although such a practice may not be any worse than picking your date based
on the availability of the best banquet hall).

Terzari, I should note, outside of not
flying in 1993, doesn't put much stock in the advice he receives. "One
shouldn't put too much faith in fortune-tellers, at least not where details are
concerned," he writes. (331) He is
interested in the different ways the art is practiced which makes his travels
informative.

Terzari spent most of 1993 traveling from
his home in Bangkok. He headed down the
Malay Peninsula to Singapore, wandered his way around in Miramar/Burma,
Cambodia, Vietnam, China. He then took a
train from Asia to Europe to visit his home in Italy and took a freighter back
to Asia. Along the way he gains a
renewed appreciation for travel:

Insights
into travel; Travel is an art; and one must practice it in a relaxed way, with
passion, with love. I realized that
after years of going about in airplanes I had unlearned the art-the only one I
care about. (123).

Ironically I
read the above quote while on an airplane!
Along the way, he often laments the changes going on in this part of the
world.

Tibet,
to protect its spirituality, for centuries forbade anyone to cross its borders;
that is how it preserved its very special aura.
There it was the Chinese invasion that broke the spell; in the name of
moderation, of course. One of the most
disturbing bits of news I have read in recent years is that he Chinese, to
facilitate (what else?) tourist access, have decided to "modernize"
the lighting of the Potala, the Dalai Lama's palace-temple, and have installed
neon lights. This is no accident: neon
kills everything, even the gods. And as
they die, the Tibetan identity gradually dies with them. (31)

While traveling
on a container ship, he laments the lost of ships shapely elegance, and how
technology has stolen poetry from a life at sea. (366, 368)

He often employs a dry sarcastic
humor. Reporting on the work of the
United Nations in Cambodia, he speaks of the various nations with troops there
and their own baggage: "Indonesians responsible for massacres in Timor,
Thais who have murdered unarmed protesters in Bangkok, and the police from
various African dictators. (262)

Terzani appears concern that the Chinese
are dominating much of Asia (it's an age old battle as Chinese have outposts
all over the region). When visiting a
Malay fortune-teller, the man told of his past life. When asking for details, the man said:

That
I do not see... The great majority of my
clients are Chinese, and if I started talking about their previous lives I
would go bankrupt. The Chinese do not
care about past lives, only this life; they are interested in making money, and
what they want to know is how far they can go in cheating their customers and
deceiving their friends." (347)

Terzani
suggested his fortune-teller friend was "another victim of the prosaic
character of the times, and of the diaspora Chinese!" (347) I wondered if
Terzani bias had something to do with having once been expelled from
China. Yet, in Malaysia I did see how
the local Malay people were fearful of the Chinese as they tended to be the
minority with the money and influence.

Another change he finds troubling is how
Western Capitalism is changing the culture.

Projecting itself as the only true model of human progress, the West has
managed to give a massive inferiority complex to those who are not 'modern' in
its image—not even Christianity accomplished this, and now dumping
all that is unknown in order to adopt all that is Western... (64-65)

At another
place, he laments finding karaoke (Japanese capitalism is essentially western
capitalism) in the middle of a Burmese jungle and I was reminded of my own
experiences in a karaoke bar in Mongolia. (366)
Terzani also calls Singapore the "Bethlehem of the great new
religion of consumerism." (171) Although Terzani explores religious
beliefs along the way and compares them to the faith of his childhood, he never
seems interested in religion even though he does end his question with a
boot-camp on mediation that was taught by an ex-CIA American Buddhist.
(376) He seems to have a great
appreciation for Buddhism and likes how the faith tradition prohibits bragging
about one's progress in mediation. (384)

I enjoyed this book and (although a bit
dated and at times Terzani can be a little condescending) recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about Southeast Asia
and the role various forms of fortune-telling plays within society there.

Musings

This blog contains observations on life and nature written by Sage, satire and parody written by Nevada Jack, and an occasional book review or poem. As a general rule, the author of the blog doesn't write about his work or his family. Email at sagecoveredhills [at] gmail.com